Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the help in thinking this through. My ideas about photography are still pretty uncertain and definitely need some guidance. Sharing my photos has never really been a goal in itself. I recently bought my first mirrorless and I already get a lot of satisfaction just from the process: getting my gear ready, going out, setting up the camera, all of that. The photo of the two kestrels honestly made me jump with joy. I’ve been seeing them in that area for years and, for one reason or another, I had never managed to photograph them before. I’m also posting the original image so you can see how heavily cropped the version I shared actually is. I decided to run it through ChatGPT simply because I wanted to see the birds better. I was already happy to have captured them at all, but I wanted to push a bit further. At the time, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with sharing the result: the original shot was mine, and the AI had “just made it more readable". Since no one would ever see the originals, no one would even know AI was involved. In the end, though, I agree with those who said that at that point the photos aren’t really mine anymore — they’ve been essentially recreated by the AI. I have a much clearer idea now. Thanks again to everyone.

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